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Tuesday, January 08, 2013

What a Disaster

Yesterday we were supposed to have our new treadmill delivered. Notice I said supposed to. Let's just say, nothing about the delivery went smoothly.

Dave bought a big monster treadmill - the NordicTrack Commercial 1750 (bought from Sears). It's big; it's strong; tt's got all the bells and whistles. It's meant to RUN on and used extensively. And why wouldn't we buy something this big and powerful? We're runners. Real runners. We'll use the hell out of that thing. This big monster treadmill is exactly that - big and monstrous. It's 3 feet wide, it's 81 inches (just under 7 feet) long, and it ways a whopping 350 pounds. Store all that information in the back of your mind....

The whole delivery started off badly. The delivery window given to us on Sunday was between 1:30 and 3:30. This suited us well - Dave works from home and I get off work at noon. At 12:30, though, Dave called me (I was at the grocery store) and said I needed to hurry home because the delivery guys said they'd be there at 1:00 and he had his daily meeting at 1:00. I would need to handle the delivery. Um, what? You bought this thing; you deal with the delivery. Who complains about a delivery coming early? We do. It was interrupting our scheduled. Sure enough, the delivery showed up exactly at 1:00. Dave's computer was ringing off the hook for his meeting, the doorbell was ringing, and the dog was barking. We let the delivery guys in who looked at the space and started doing measurements (the treadmill was going to the basement). Dave went up to his meeting, gave his updated in about 3 minutes, and then he was back down to help the delivery guys.

We have a newer house which means, of course, none of our staircases goes straight up or straight down. To go to the basement, you go down three steps to a landing, left turn, three steps to a landing, right turn, and down the remainder of steps to the basement. While this is a pain in the ass, everything is up to code. We have 36 inch doorways and hallways, along with ceilings that are at least 8 feet tall. The delivery guys took one look at our staircase and said, nope, it wasn't going to work. He started doing measurements and said there was no way. Well, don't eff with two engineers! We took our measurements and heck yeah it would work. We asked them to take it out of the box to move it to the basement and they said that the box was exactly the same size as the treadmill (there's no way in hell this is true). The one dude wanted to try it, but the other guy was defiant. He said he had only successfully delivered these treadmills to houses that had double doors or if it was being moved into a garage. Come on! Sears would not sell a treadmill that could only be sold to a hand-full of people. He wanted us to sign a waiver that he would not be held responsible for damage to the basement or the treadmill. And he quantified that with saying "something will get damaged." Because we thought the guy was an asshat and would deliberately do something to cause damage, we decided not to sign the waiver. The other dude got mad and just said, "come on we're wasting time." They packed up and left. Not only did they not even try to move the treadmill to the basement, they didn't even bring it in the house, didn't even get it off the truck!

I have reached the point of my pregnancy where I'm either full-on rage or crying about something trivial (like those silly Iams commercials with the giant dog and the female soldier). By the end of this, I was a little bit of both. Dave, who NEVER gets mad or upset, was also fuming. I immediately took to Twitter (because, duh!) and called out Sears and their incompetency. Funny enough, they got back to me instantly and said they were assigning a case manager. I went to bed and took a nap. Dave went back to work. I woke up a couple hours later and asked Dave if they (Sears) called. He said no. I asked him if he had called Sears. He said no. Again...pregnancy...rage....I had to leave the house to cool off. When I returned a few hours later, I really hadn't cooled off and let it all out. I swear, I was going to go into labor I was in such a rage. Dave, the calmer of the two of us, finally called Sears and talked to two different people. First they assumed that we wanted to file a complaint against the driver. Yes, but, where the hell is our treadmill? Dave got transferred to a supervisor and explained everything again. It was decided to do the delivery again (tomorrow) and there is a note left with the drivers that they have to at least TRY to move it to the basement. If they could not move it, they are being told they have to leave it and the shipping fee would be waived. Frankly, I think the shipping fee should be waived anyway because THEY ALREADY DELIVERED IT!!!

Then Dave called NordicTrack. Although we didn't order through them, their customer service was really helpful. They told us when they deliver this same model, it actually comes disassembled and then is put together in the location the client wants it. I guess the one from Sears comes fully assembled (as we asked them to remove the arms from it yesterday to help the move). The NordicTrack people told us that if Sears cannot deliver it, that we can call them and they will give us instructions for how to disassemble it and put it back together. At least somebody's helping us out!

This weekend is our baby shower. Let's hope we don't need to ask our friends to help us move pieces and parts to the basement.